Black-box locators near Flight 370 search area

PERTH, Australia--An Australian ship loaded with equipment capable of detecting Malaysia Airlines Flight 370's "black box" flight recorders is due to arrive in the search zone for the missing plane later Friday, just days before the batteries in their locator beacons are likely to run out.

The ADV Ocean Shield is loaded with U.S. Navy equipment that will be towed behind the ship and can detect "pings" emitted by the locator beacons in the black boxes, still thought to be sitting on the floor of the southern Indian Ocean up to 2 1/2 miles below the surface of the water.

The vessel is also carrying an underwater unmanned vehicle, known as a Bluefin 21, to help search for any wreckage. The small vehicle can operate for 25 hours and descend nearly 15,000 feet.

Malaysian investigators still believe Flight 370 crashed in the ocean when it ran out of fuel--thousands of kilometers from the nearest airport--hours after disappearing from civilian radar on March 8 with 239 passengers and crew on board. The locator beacons in the black boxes, which may contain crucial clues about what happened to the ill-fated flight, have an estimated life of 30 days and could expire as early as this weekend.

The focus of the search swung abruptly to the southern Indian Ocean on March 20, based on satellite images of possible plane debris. So far, nothing related to the missing plane has been found.

"The search area is vast and conditions are not easy, but the new refined search area has given us new hope," Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak told reporters on Thursday during his first visit to Australia since the tragedy unfolded.

But with uncertainty persisting about whether it is the right area, investigators from five countries, including the U.S. and China, are continuing to analyze satellite and communications data that shed light on how the plane was traveling, including its speed and altitude.

On Friday, up to 10 military aircraft, four civilian jets and nine ships will be dispatched to the search area, which is some 1,700 kilometers (about 1,000 miles) northwest of Perth, Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Center said in a statement. Friday's designated search area of 217,000 square kilometers is almost as big as the U.K.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Thursday described the search as possibly the most difficult in human history and reiterated that there was no certainty of a breakthrough.

"On the basis of just small pieces of information, we are putting the jigsaw together," he said. "Every day we have a higher degree of confidence that we know more about what happened to this ill-fated flight."

Now in its fourth week, the hunt for Flight 370 has yielded only unrelated scraps of junk. The current search area is in a part of the ocean where currents frequently bring together floating garbage.

Earlier this week, the search was joined by a U.K. military submarine equipped to detect signals from the flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders. The HMS Tireless bolsters the capabilities of the multinational team, which has been relying on a combination of satellite images, radar data and crews scanning through aircraft windows to search for floating debris.

The nuclear-powered submarine, built for the Royal Navy as a Cold War attack vehicle, has equipment on board that may help it to pinpoint signals from Flight 370's recorders. It could also be used to search for aircraft wreckage along the largely undisturbed seabed, a spokeswoman for the U.K.'s defense ministry said.

Peter Jennings, a defense expert at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said submarines are of limited use in deep-water searches, though. Most are designed to operate in less than a kilometer (0.6 miles) of water.

The best hope, he said, lies with sonar systems towed by ships, such as the black-box locators on board Ocean Shield.

Intraday Data provided by SIX Financial Information and subject to terms of use.
Historical and current end-of-day data provided by SIX Financial Information. Intraday data
delayed per exchange requirements. S&P/Dow Jones Indices (SM) from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All quotes are in local exchange time. Real time last sale data provided by NASDAQ. More
information on NASDAQ traded symbols and their current financial status. Intraday
data delayed 15 minutes for Nasdaq, and 20 minutes for other exchanges. S&P/Dow Jones Indices (SM)
from Dow Jones & Company, Inc. SEHK intraday data is provided by SIX Financial Information and is
at least 60-minutes delayed. All quotes are in local exchange time.